찰리 멍거의 연설 (feat. 인생 조언)

개요

주식은 잘 몰라도 찰리 멍거가 대단한 사람인 건 안다. 얼마 전에 우연한 기회로 보게된 2007년 University of Southern California Law School 학생들을 대상으로 졸업생을 대상으로 한 연설문. 삶을 대하는 태도와 조언이 가득한 내용이라 이 기회를 빌려 원문과 더불어 한글 번역을 해보고자한다.

 

내용

"Well no doubt many of you are wondering why the speaker is so old."
"여러분들은 아마 왜 이렇게 나이 든 연사가 왔는지 궁금해하실 것입니다."

"Well the answer is obvious: he hasn't died yet."
"답은 간단합니다: 아직 죽지 않았기 때문이죠." (ㅋㅋㅋㅋ)

"And why was the speaker chosen?"
"그리고 왜 이 연사가 선택되었을까요?"

"Well I don't know that either. I like to think that the development department had nothing to do with it."
"그것도 저도 모릅니다. 발전기금 부서와는 관계없었기를 바랄 뿐이에요." (ㅋㅋㅋ)

"Whatever the reason I think it's very fitting that I'm sitting here because I see one crowd of faces in the rear not wearing robes, and I know, from having educated an army of descendants, who really deserves a lot of the honors that are being given to the people here upfront. The sacrifice and the wisdom and the value transfer that comes from one generation to the next can never be underrated."
"어떤 이유에서든, 제가 여기 앉아있는 것이 적절하다고 생각합니다. 뒤쪽에서 가운을 입지 않은 얼굴들을 보니, 수많은 자손을 교육해본 경험에서 말씀드리자면, 앞자리에 앉은 사람들이 받는 영예의 상당 부분은 사실 저분들의 몫입니다. 한 세대에서 다음 세대로 전해지는 희생과 지혜, 가치의 전달은 결코 과소평가될 수 없습니다."

"And that gives me enormous pleasure as I look at this sea of Asian faces to my left. All my life I've admired Confucius. I like the idea of filial piety, the idea that there are values that are taught and duties that come naturally and all that should be passed on to the next generation. And you people who don't think there's anything in this idea, please note how fast these Asian faces are rising in American life. I think they have something."

"제 왼쪽에 보이는 수많은 아시아계 얼굴들을 보니 큰 기쁨을 느낍니다. 저는 평생 공자를 존경해왔습니다. 효도의 개념, 자연스럽게 따라오는 가치와 의무들이 다음 세대로 전해져야 한다는 생각이 좋습니다. 이런 생각이 의미 없다고 여기시는 분들은, 미국 사회에서 이 아시아계 얼굴들이 얼마나 빠르게 성장하고 있는지 주목해보시기 바랍니다. 그들에게는 분명 무언가가 있습니다."

"All right, I scratched out a few notes and I'm going to try and just give an account of some ideas and attitudes that have worked well for me. I don't claim that they are perfect for everybody. Although I think many of them are pretty close to universal values and many of them are can't fail ideas."
"자, 제가 몇 가지 메모를 적어왔는데, 저에게 도움이 되었던 아이디어들과 태도들을 말씀드리려 합니다. 이것들이 모든 사람에게 완벽하다고 주장하지는 않습니다. 하지만 대부분이 보편적 가치에 가깝고 실패할 수 없는 아이디어들이라고 생각합니다."

"What are the core ideas that have helped me? Well luckily I got at a very early age the idea that the safest way to try and get what you want is to try and deserve what you want. It's such a simple idea, it's the golden rule so to speak. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. There is no ethos in my opinion that is better for any lawyer or any other person to have."
"저에게 도움이 되었던 핵심 아이디어들은 무엇일까요? 다행히도 저는 아주 어린 나이에 한 가지를 깨달았습니다. 원하는 것을 얻는 가장 안전한 방법은 그것을 받을 자격이 있는 사람이 되려고 노력하는 것입니다. 이는 아주 단순한 생각이며, 이른바 황금률이라고 할 수 있죠. 당신이 상대방의 입장이라면 사고 싶은 것을 세상에 제공하라는 것입니다. 제 생각에 이보다 더 좋은 윤리관은 없습니다. 변호사든 누구든 말이죠."

"By and large the people who have this ethos win in life and they don't win just money, just honors. They win the respect, the deserved trust, of the people they deal with, and there is huge pleasure in life to be obtained from getting deserved trust. And the way to get it is to deliver what you'd want to buy if the circumstances were reversed."
"대체로 이런 윤리관을 가진 사람들은 인생에서 성공합니다. 그리고 그들은 단지 돈이나 명예만 얻는 것이 아닙니다. 그들은 함께 일하는 사람들의 존경과 마땅한 신뢰를 얻습니다. 이렇게 얻은 신뢰에서 인생의 큰 기쁨을 찾을 수 있죠. 그리고 이를 얻는 방법은 입장이 바뀌었을 때 자신이 원하는 것을 제공하는 것입니다."

"Occasionally you find a perfect rogue of a person, who dies rich and unwidely known. But mostly these people are fully understood by the surrounding civilization, and when the cathedral is full of people at the funeral ceremony, most of them are there to celebrate the fact that the person is dead."
"때로는 부자로 죽고 널리 알려진 완벽한 사기꾼을 발견할 수 있습니다. 하지만 대부분 이런 사람들의 본모습은 주변 사회가 다 알고 있습니다. 그리고 장례식장의 성당이 사람들로 가득 찼을 때, 대부분은 그 사람이 죽었다는 사실을 축하하러 온 것입니다."

"And, that reminds me of the story of the time when one of these people died and the minister said, "it's now time for someone to say something nice about the deceased." And nobody came forward. And nobody came forward. And nobody came forward. And finally one man came up and he said, "Well, his brother was worse." That is not where you want to go! That's not the kind of funeral you want to have – you'll leave entirely the wrong example."
"그리고 이것은 제게 이런 사람 중 한 명이 죽었을 때의 이야기를 떠올리게 합니다. 목사가 '이제 고인에 대해 좋은 말씀을 해주실 분 없으신가요?'라고 했을 때, 아무도 나서지 않았습니다. 계속 아무도 나서지 않았죠. 마침내 한 남자가 나와서 말했습니다. '음, 그의 형제는 더 나빴습니다.' 이런 상황이 되어서는 안 됩니다! 이런 장례식을 치르고 싶진 않을 겁니다 - 완전히 잘못된 본보기를 남기게 될 테니까요."

"A second idea that I got very early was that there is no love that's so right as admiration-based love, and that love should include the instructive dead. Somehow I got that idea and I lived with it all my life and it's been very, very useful to me."
"제가 일찍이 얻은 두 번째 아이디어는 존경을 기반으로 한 사랑만큼 올바른 사랑은 없다는 것이며, 그 사랑은 우리에게 가르침을 주는 죽은 이들도 포함해야 한다는 것입니다. 어떻게든 저는 이 생각을 얻었고 평생 이것과 함께 살아왔으며, 이는 저에게 매우 매우 유용했습니다."

"A love like that celebrated by Somerset Maugham and his book "Of Human Bondage" – that's a sick kind of love, it's a disease. And if you find yourself in a disease like that my advice to you is turn around and fix it. Eliminate it."
"서머셋 몸이 그의 책 '인간의 굴레'에서 묘사한 것과 같은 사랑 - 그것은 병적인 종류의 사랑이며, 하나의 질병입니다. 만약 여러분이 그런 질병에 걸렸다면, 제 조언은 돌아서서 그것을 고치라는 것입니다. 그것을 제거하세요."


"Another idea that I got – and this may remind you of Confucius too – is that wisdom acquisition is a moral duty, it's not something you do just to advance in life. Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty."
"제가 얻은 또 다른 생각은 - 이것은 공자를 떠올리게 할 수도 있는데 - 지혜를 얻는 것은 도덕적 의무라는 것입니다. 이는 단순히 인생에서 성공하기 위해 하는 것이 아닙니다. 지혜를 얻는 것은 도덕적 의무입니다."

"And there's a corollary to that proposition which is very important, it means that you're hooked for lifetime learning, and without lifetime learning you people are not going to do very well. You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You're going to advance in life by what you're going to learn after you leave here."

"그리고 이 명제에는 매우 중요한 따름 정리가 있습니다. 그것은 여러분이 평생 학습에 매진해야 한다는 것이며, 평생 학습 없이는 여러분이 잘 해나갈 수 없다는 것입니다. 여러분이 이미 알고 있는 것만으로는 인생에서 멀리 가지 못할 것입니다. 여러분은 이곳을 떠난 후 배우게 될 것들을 통해 인생에서 발전하게 될 것입니다."

"If you take Berkshire Hathaway which is certainly one of the best regarded corporations in the world and may have the best long-term investment record in the entire history of civilization, the skill that got Berkshire through one decade would not have sufficed to get it through the next decade with the achievements made. Without Warren Buffett being a learning machine, a continuous learning machine, the record would have been absolutely impossible."
"세계에서 가장 존경받는 기업 중 하나이며 문명 역사상 최고의 장기 투자 실적을 보유하고 있을 버크셔 해서웨이를 보십시오. 한 10년을 성공으로 이끈 기술만으로는 다음 10년의 성과를 달성하기에 충분하지 않았을 것입니다. 워렌 버핏이 학습 기계, 즉 지속적인 학습 기계가 되지 않았다면, 이런 기록은 절대적으로 불가능했을 것입니다."

"The same is true at lower walks of life. I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines, they go to bed every night a little wiser than when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you."
"이는 평범한 삶에서도 마찬가지입니다. 저는 가장 똑똑하지 않은, 때로는 가장 부지런하지도 않은 사람들이 성공하는 것을 계속해서 봅니다. 하지만 그들은 학습 기계입니다. 그들은 매일 밤 아침에 일어났을 때보다 조금 더 현명해져서 잠자리에 들며, 특히 앞으로 갈 길이 멀 때 이것이 얼마나 도움이 되는지 모릅니다."

"Alfred North Whitehead said one time that 'The rapid advance of civilization came only when man invented the method of invention,' and of course he was referring to the huge growth of GDP per capita and all the other good things that we now take for granted which started a few hundred years ago and before that all was stasis."
"알프레드 노스 화이트헤드는 한때 '문명의 급속한 발전은 인간이 발명의 방법을 발명했을 때에만 찾아왔다'고 말했습니다. 물론 그는 1인당 GDP의 엄청난 성장과 우리가 지금은 당연하게 여기는 모든 좋은 것들을 언급한 것입니다. 이는 수백 년 전에 시작되었고, 그 이전에는 모든 것이 정체되어 있었죠."

"So if civilization can progress only when it invents the method of invention, you can progress only when you learn the method of learning. I was very lucky. I came to law school having learned the method of learning and nothing has served me better in my long life than continuous learning."
"문명이 발명의 방법을 발명했을 때만 진보할 수 있었던 것처럼, 여러분도 학습하는 방법을 배워야만 진보할 수 있습니다. 저는 매우 운이 좋았습니다. 저는 학습하는 방법을 배운 상태로 법학대학원에 왔고, 제 긴 인생에서 지속적인 학습보다 더 도움이 된 것은 없었습니다."

"And if you take Warren Buffett and watched him with a time clock, I would say half of all the time he spends is sitting on his ass and reading. And a big chunk of the rest of the time is spent talking one-on-one either on the telephone or personally with highly gifted people whom he trusts and who trust him. In other words, it looks quite academic all this worldly success."
"워렌 버핏을 시간을 재며 지켜본다면, 그가 보내는 시간의 절반은 가만히 앉아서 독서하는 것입니다. 그리고 나머지 상당 부분은 그가 신뢰하고 또 그를 신뢰하는 재능 있는 사람들과 전화나 직접 만나서 일대일로 대화하는 데 씁니다. 다시 말해, 이 모든 세속적 성공이 꽤나 학구적으로 보이는 것이죠."

"Academia has many wonderful values in it. I came across such a value not too long ago. It was several years ago. In my capacity as a hospital board chairman I was dealing with a medical school academic. And this man over years of hard work had made himself know more about bone tumor pathology than almost anybody else in the world. And he wanted to pass this knowledge on to the rest of us, so that people could treat bone cancer."
"학계에는 많은 훌륭한 가치들이 있습니다. 저는 얼마 전에 그러한 가치를 접했습니다. 몇 년 전의 일입니다. 제가 병원 이사회 의장으로 있을 때 한 의과대학 교수를 만났습니다. 이 사람은 수년간의 노력으로 세계에서 거의 누구보다도 골종양 병리학에 대해 많이 알게 되었습니다. 그리고 그는 사람들이 골암을 치료할 수 있도록 이 지식을 우리 모두에게 전달하고 싶어했습니다."

"And how was he going to do it?
Well he decided to write a textbook that would be very useful to other people. And I don't think a textbook like this sells two thousand copies – but those two thousand copies are in all the major cancer centers in the world."
"그는 어떻게 그것을 하려고 했을까요?
그는 다른 사람들에게 매우 유용할 교과서를 쓰기로 결심했습니다. 이런 교과서는 2천 부도 팔리지 않을 것입니다 - 하지만 그 2천 부는 전 세계 주요 암센터 모두에 있습니다."

"He took a year sabbatical, he sat down on his computer and he had all the slides because he saved them and organized them and filed them. He worked 17 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a year and that was his sabbatical. At the end of the year he had one of the great bone tumor pathology textbooks in the world. When you're around values like that, you want to pick up as much as you can."
"그는 1년간 안식년을 가졌고, 컴퓨터 앞에 앉아 자신이 보관하고 정리해둔 모든 슬라이드들을 꺼냈습니다. 그는 1년 동안 하루 17시간씩, 주 7일을 일했고 그것이 그의 안식년이었습니다. 1년이 끝날 무렵, 그는 세계적인 골종양 병리학 교과서 중 하나를 만들어냈습니다. 이런 가치들을 접하게 되면, 여러분은 가능한 한 많이 배우고 싶어질 것입니다."

"Another idea that was hugely useful to me was that I listened in law school when some wag said, 'A legal mind is a mind that when two things are all twisted up together and interacting, it's feasible to think responsibly about one thing and not the other.'"
"제게 매우 유용했던 또 다른 아이디어는 법학대학원에서 누군가가 농담처럼 한 말을 들었을 때입니다. '법률가의 마음이란 두 가지가 서로 얽혀 상호작용할 때, 한 가지만 책임감 있게 생각하고 다른 하나는 생각하지 않아도 된다고 여기는 마음이다.'"

"Well I could see from that one sentence that that was perfectly ridiculous, and it pushed me further into my natural drift, which was into learning all the big ideas and all the big disciplines. So I wouldn't be a perfect damn fool who was trying to think about one aspect of something that couldn't be removed from the totality of the situation in a constructive fashion."
"저는 이 한 문장을 듣고 이것이 완전히 터무니없다는 것을 알 수 있었습니다. 그리고 이는 제가 모든 큰 아이디어들과 주요 학문들을 배우고자 하는 자연스러운 성향을 더욱 강화시켰습니다. 그래서 저는 전체 상황에서 분리될 수 없는 한 측면만을 생각하려 하는 완벽한 바보가 되지 않으려 했습니다."

"And what I noted, since the really big ideas carry 95% of the freight, it wasn't at all hard for me to pick up all the big ideas and all the big disciplines and make them a standard part of my mental routines. Once you have the ideas of course they are no good if you don't practice. You don't practice, you lose it."
"제가 주목한 것은, 정말 중요한 아이디어들이 95%의 가치를 차지하기 때문에, 모든 중요한 아이디어들과 주요 학문들을 습득하여 이를 제 사고방식의 표준으로 만드는 것이 전혀 어렵지 않았다는 점입니다. 물론 아이디어를 가지고 있더라도 연습하지 않으면 소용이 없습니다. 연습하지 않으면, 그것을 잃게 됩니다."

"So I went through life constantly practicing this model of disciplinary approach. Well I can't tell you what that's done for me, it's made life more fun, it's made me more constructive, it's made me more helpful to others, it's made me enormously rich, you name it, that attitude really helps."

"그래서 저는 평생 동안 이런 학문적 접근 모델을 계속 실천해왔습니다. 이것이 제게 어떤 영향을 미쳤는지 다 말씀드릴 수 없을 정도입니다. 인생을 더 재미있게 만들었고, 저를 더 건설적으로 만들었으며, 다른 사람들에게 더 도움이 되게 했고, 엄청난 부자가 되게 했습니다. 뭐든지 말씀하세요, 그 태도는 정말로 도움이 됩니다."

"Now there are dangers in it, because it works so well, that if you do it, you will frequently find you are sitting in the presence of some other expert, maybe even an expert that's superior to you, supervising you. And you will know more than he does about his own specialty, a lot more. You will see the correct answer when he's missed it."
"이것에는 위험도 있습니다. 너무 잘 작동하기 때문에, 여러분이 이를 실천하면 다른 전문가, 심지어 여러분보다 뛰어나고 여러분을 감독하는 전문가 앞에 앉아있는 상황을 자주 마주하게 될 것입니다. 그리고 여러분은 그의 전문 분야에 대해 그보다 더 많이, 훨씬 더 많이 알게 될 것입니다. 그가 놓친 정답을 여러분이 보게 될 것입니다."

"That is a very dangerous position to be in. You can cause enormous offense by helpfully being right in a way that causes somebody else to lose face. And I never found a perfect way to solve that problem."
"이는 매우 위험한 상황입니다. 다른 사람의 체면을 구기면서 친절하게 옳은 말을 하는 것은 큰 불쾌감을 줄 수 있습니다. 저는 이 문제를 해결할 완벽한 방법을 찾지 못했습니다."

"I was a great poker player when I was young but I wasn't a good enough poker player so that people failed to sense that I thought I knew more than they did about their subjects and it gave a lot of offense. Now I'm just regarded as eccentric but there was a difficult period to go through."
"저는 젊었을 때 포커를 잘 쳤지만, 사람들이 제가 그들의 분야에 대해 그들보다 더 많이 안다고 생각한다는 것을 눈치채지 못할 정도로 포커를 잘 치지는 못했고, 이는 많은 불쾌감을 주었습니다. 지금은 그저 괴짜로 여겨지지만, 그때는 힘든 시기였습니다."

"And my advice to you is to learn sometimes to keep your light under a bushel."
"그래서 제 조언은 때로는 자신의 빛을 숨기는 법을 배우라는 것입니다."

"One of my colleagues, also number one in his class in law school, a great success in life, clerk for the supreme court, etc. But he knew a lot and he tended to show it as a very young lawyer and one day the senior partner called him in and said, 'Listen Chuck, I want to explain something to you. Your duty under any circumstances is to behave in such a way that the client thinks he's the smartest person in the world. If you have any little energy and insight available after that, use it to make your senior partner look like the smartest person in the world. And only after you've satisfied those two obligations do you want your light to shine at all.'"

"제 동료 중 한 명은 법대에서 수석을 했고, 대법원 서기도 지내는 등 인생에서 큰 성공을 거둔 사람이었습니다. 하지만 그는 매우 젊은 변호사 시절에 자신이 아는 것을 과시하는 경향이 있었고, 어느 날 선임 파트너가 그를 불러서 말했습니다. '척, 들어보게. 자네에게 설명하고 싶은 게 있네. 어떤 상황에서든 자네의 의무는 의뢰인이 자신이 세상에서 가장 똑똑한 사람이라고 생각하도록 행동하는 것이네. 그 후에 에너지와 통찰력이 남는다면, 그것을 선임 파트너가 세상에서 가장 똑똑해 보이게 만드는 데 사용하게. 이 두 가지 의무를 다한 후에야 자네의 빛을 발할 수 있다네.'"

"Well, that may be very good advice for rising in a large firm. But it wasn't what I did I always obeyed the drift of my nature and if other people didn't like it, well I didn't need to be adored by everybody."
"글쎄요, 그것은 대형 로펌에서 성공하기 위한 아주 좋은 조언일 수 있습니다. 하지만 저는 그렇게 하지 않았습니다. 저는 항상 제 본성의 흐름을 따랐고, 다른 사람들이 그것을 좋아하지 않더라도, 모든 사람에게 사랑받을 필요는 없다고 생각했습니다."

"Another idea – and by the way when I talk about this multidisciplinary attitude I'm really following a very key idea of the greatest lawyer of antiquity, Marcus Tullius Cicero."
"또 다른 생각은 - 그리고 제가 이 다학문적 태도에 대해 이야기할 때, 저는 실제로 고대 최고의 변호사인 마르쿠스 툴리우스 키케로의 매우 중요한 아이디어를 따르고 있는 것입니다."

"Cicero is famous for saying, 'A man who doesn't know what happened before he was born goes through life like a child.' That is a very correct idea of Cicero's. And he's right to ridicule somebody so foolish as not to know what happened before he was born."
"키케로는 '자신이 태어나기 전에 무슨 일이 일어났는지 모르는 사람은 어린아이처럼 살아간다'는 말로 유명합니다. 이것은 키케로의 매우 정확한 생각입니다. 그리고 그는 자신이 태어나기 전에 일어난 일을 모르는 것처럼 어리석은 사람을 비웃는 것이 맞습니다."

"But if you generalize Cicero as I think one should, there are all these other things that you should know in addition to history and those other things are the big ideas in all the other disciplines. And it doesn't help you just to know them enough just so you can prattle them back on an exam and get an A. You have to learn these things in such a way that they're in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life."
"하지만 제가 생각하는 대로 키케로의 말을 일반화하면, 역사 외에도 알아야 할 다른 것들이 많이 있으며, 그것들은 다른 모든 학문 분야의 큰 아이디어들입니다. 시험에서 되뇌어 A를 받을 수 있을 정도로만 아는 것은 도움이 되지 않습니다. 이것들을 머릿속에 정신적 격자구조로 만들어 평생 자동으로 사용할 수 있을 정도로 배워야 합니다."

"If you do that I solemnly promise you that one day you'll be walking down the street and you'll look to your right and left and think, 'My heavenly days! I'm now one of the few most competent people of my whole age cohort.'"
"만약 여러분이 그렇게 한다면, 저는 진지하게 약속하건대 어느 날 거리를 걸으면서 좌우를 둘러보며 이렇게 생각하게 될 것입니다. '세상에! 나는 이제 내 또래에서 가장 유능한 소수의 사람들 중 한 명이 되었구나.'"

"If you don't do it, many of the brightest of you will live in the middle ranks or in the shallows."
"만약 그렇게 하지 않는다면, 여러분 중 가장 똑똑한 많은 사람들이 중간 계급이나 얕은 곳에서 살게 될 것입니다."

"Another idea that I got, and it was encapsulated by that story the Dean recounted about the man who wanted to know where he was going to die and he wouldn't go there, that rustic who had that idea had a profound truth in his hand."
"제가 얻은 또 다른 아이디어는, 학장이 이야기했던 자신이 죽을 장소를 알고 싶어했고 그곳에 가지 않으려 했던 사람의 이야기에 담겨있습니다. 그 시골 사람이 가진 그 생각에는 심오한 진리가 있었습니다."

"The way complex adaptive systems work and the way mental constructs work, problems frequently get easier and I would even say usually are easier to solve if you turn them around in reverse."
"복잡한 적응 시스템이 작동하는 방식과 정신적 구조가 작동하는 방식에서, 문제들은 종종 더 쉬워지며, 저는 심지어 그것들을 거꾸로 뒤집어 보면 보통 더 쉽게 해결된다고 말하고 싶습니다."

"In other words if you want to help India, the question you should ask is not 'how can I help India?', you think 'what's doing the worst damage in India? What would automatically do the worst damage and how do I avoid it?'"
"다시 말해서, 만약 여러분이 인도를 돕고 싶다면, '어떻게 인도를 도울 수 있을까?'라고 묻지 말고, '무엇이 인도에 가장 큰 해를 끼치고 있는가? 무엇이 자동적으로 가장 큰 피해를 주며, 어떻게 그것을 피할 수 있을까?'라고 생각해야 합니다."

"You'd think they're logically the same thing, they're not. Those of you who have mastered algebra know that inversion frequently will solve problems which nothing else will solve."
"여러분은 이것들이 논리적으로 같은 것이라고 생각할 수 있지만, 그렇지 않습니다. 대수학을 마스터한 분들은 역으로 생각하는 것이 다른 어떤 것으로도 해결할 수 없는 문제를 해결할 수 있다는 것을 알고 있습니다."

"And in life, unless you're more gifted than Einstein, inversion will help you solve problems that you can't solve in other ways. Let me use a little inversion now: What will really fail in life? What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability."
"그리고 인생에서, 여러분이 아인슈타인보다 더 재능이 있지 않는 한, 역으로 생각하는 것은 다른 방법으로는 해결할 수 없는 문제들을 해결하는 데 도움이 될 것입니다. 지금 역으로 생각해 봅시다: 인생에서 정말로 실패하게 만드는 것은 무엇일까요? 무엇을 피해야 할까요? 답은 간단합니다: 게으름과 신뢰성 부족입니다."

"If you're unreliable it doesn't matter what your virtues are, you're going to crater immediately. So doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability."
"만약 여러분이 신뢰할 수 없는 사람이라면, 여러분의 다른 미덕이 무엇이든 상관없이 즉시 몰락하게 될 것입니다. 그래서 여러분이 성실하게 약속한 것을 이행하는 것은 여러분의 행동의 자동적인 부분이 되어야 합니다. 여러분은 게으름과 신뢰성 부족을 피해야 합니다."

"Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind. You've seen that. You see a lot of it on TV – preachers for instance, you know they've all got different ideas about theology and a lot of them have minds that are made of cabbage."
"제가 생각하기에 피해야 할 또 다른 것은 지나치게 강렬한 이데올로기입니다. 이것은 사람의 마음을 양배추처럼 만들어버리기 때문입니다. 여러분도 보셨을 것입니다. TV에서 많이 볼 수 있죠 - 예를 들어 설교자들, 그들은 모두 신학에 대해 서로 다른 생각을 가지고 있고 그들 중 많은 사람들의 마음은 양배추가 되어버렸습니다."

"But that can happen with political ideology. And if you're young it's easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out what you're doing is pounding it in, pounding it in and you're gradually ruining your mind so you want to be very, very careful with this ideology. It's a big danger."
"이것은 정치적 이데올로기에서도 일어날 수 있습니다. 젊을 때는 쉽게 충성심에 빠져들 수 있고, 자신이 충실한 구성원임을 선언하고 정통 이데올로기를 외치기 시작하면, 여러분은 그것을 계속해서 주입하고 있는 것이며, 점차 자신의 마음을 망치고 있는 것입니다. 그래서 이데올로기에 대해 매우 매우 조심해야 합니다. 이것은 큰 위험입니다."

"In my mind I've got a little example I use whenever I think about ideology and it's these Scandinavian canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools of the Arran Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100%."
"제 마음속에는 이데올로기에 대해 생각할 때마다 떠올리는 작은 예시가 있습니다. 스칸디나비아의 모든 급류를 정복한 스칸디나비아 카누 선수들이 미국의 아란 급류의 소용돌이에도 도전하려 했던 이야기입니다. 사망률은 100%였습니다."

"A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology. I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is I say 'I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it.'"
"거대한 소용돌이는 들어가고 싶은 것이 아니며, 저는 매우 깊은 이데올로기도 마찬가지라고 생각합니다. 제가 자연스럽게 한 이데올로기를 다른 것보다 선호하게 될 때 정신을 건강하게 유지하는 데 도움이 되는 '철칙'이 있습니다. 그것은 바로 '내 입장에 반대되는 주장을 그것을 지지하는 사람들보다 더 잘 설명할 수 있지 않다면, 나는 이 주제에 대해 의견을 가질 자격이 없다'는 것입니다."

"I think only when I reach that state am I qualified to speak. Now you can say that that's too much of an iron discipline. It's not too much of an iron discipline, it's not even that hard to do. It sounds a lot like the iron prescription of Ferdinand the Great, 'It's not necessary to hope in order to persevere.'"
"저는 그런 상태에 도달했을 때만 말할 자격이 있다고 생각합니다. 여러분은 이것이 너무 엄격한 규율이라고 말할 수 있습니다. 하지만 이는 너무 엄격한 것도 아니고, 심지어 그렇게 하기 어렵지도 않습니다. 이는 페르디난드 대제의 철칙과 비슷하게 들립니다. '인내하기 위해 희망이 반드시 필요한 것은 아니다.'"

"That probably is too tough for most people – I don't think it's too tough for me but it's too tough for most people. But this business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life if you want to have more correct knowledge and be wiser than other people. A heavy ideology is very likely to do you in."
"그것은 아마도 대부분의 사람들에게는 너무 힘들 것입니다 - 저에게는 너무 힘들지 않다고 생각하지만 대부분의 사람들에게는 너무 힘들죠. 하지만 극단적인 이데올로기에 빠지지 않는 것은 더 정확한 지식을 가지고 다른 사람들보다 현명해지고 싶다면 인생에서 매우 매우 중요한 일입니다. 무거운 이데올로기는 여러분을 망칠 가능성이 매우 높습니다."

"Another thing of course that does one in is the self-serving bias to which we are all subject. You think that your 'little me' is entitled to do what it wants to do, and for instance why shouldn't the true 'little me' overspend my income?"
"물론 우리를 망치는 또 다른 것은 우리 모두가 가지고 있는 자기중심적 편향입니다. 여러분은 자신의 '작은 나'가 하고 싶은 것을 할 자격이 있다고 생각하죠. 예를 들어 왜 진정한 '작은 나'가 수입보다 더 많이 쓰면 안 되는 걸까요?"

"Well, there once was a man who became the most famous composer in the world but he was utterly miserable most of the time and one of the reasons was he always overspent his income. That was Mozart. If Mozart can't get by with this kind of asinine conduct, I don't think you should try it."
"세상에서 가장 유명한 작곡가가 된 한 남자가 있었지만, 그는 대부분의 시간을 비참하게 보냈고, 그 이유 중 하나는 그가 항상 수입보다 더 많이 썼기 때문이었습니다. 그가 바로 모차르트입니다. 모차르트조차도 이런 바보 같은 행동으로는 살아갈 수 없었다면, 여러분도 시도하지 않는 것이 좋다고 생각합니다."

"Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought. Self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse. You do not want to drift into self-pity."
"일반적으로 말해서, 질투, 원한, 복수, 그리고 자기연민은 재앙적인 사고방식입니다. 자기연민은 편집증에 매우 가깝고, 편집증은 되돌리기 가장 어려운 것들 중 하나입니다. 여러분은 자기연민에 빠지고 싶지 않을 것입니다."

"I have a friend who carried a big stack of linen cards – about this thick – and when somebody would make a comment that reflected self-pity, he would take out one of the cards, take the top one off the stack and hand it to the person, and the card said, 'Your story has touched my heart. Never have I heard of anyone with as many misfortunes as you.'"
"제게는 이만큼 두꺼운 리넨 카드 뭉치를 가지고 다니는 친구가 있었는데, 누군가 자기연민이 담긴 말을 할 때마다, 카드 한 장을 꺼내서 그 사람에게 건네주곤 했습니다. 카드에는 이렇게 쓰여 있었죠. '당신의 이야기가 제 마음을 움직였습니다. 당신만큼 불행한 사람은 본 적이 없네요.'"

"Well you can say that's waggery, but I suggest that every time you find you're drifting into self-pity, and I don't care the cause – your child could be dying of cancer, self-pity is not going to improve the situation – just give yourself one of those cards."
"여러분은 이것이 익살스러운 장난이라고 말할 수 있습니다. 하지만 제가 제안하는 것은, 여러분이 자기연민에 빠져드는 것을 발견할 때마다 - 이유가 무엇이든 상관없이, 설령 여러분의 자녀가 암으로 죽어가고 있다 하더라도, 자기연민은 상황을 개선시키지 못합니다 - 자신에게 그런 카드를 한 장 주라는 것입니다."

"It's a ridiculous way to behave, and when you avoid it you get a great advantage over everybody else, almost everybody else, because self-pity is a standard condition and yet you can train yourself out of it."
"그것은 터무니없는 행동방식이지만, 여러분이 그것을 피할 때 다른 거의 모든 사람들보다 큰 이점을 얻게 됩니다. 자기연민은 표준적인 상태이지만, 여러분은 그것에서 벗어나도록 자신을 훈련할 수 있기 때문입니다."

"And of course the self-serving bias, you want to get out of yourself, thinking that what's good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on the subconscious tendency to serve one's self."
"그리고 물론 자기중심적 편향에 대해서도, 여러분은 자신에게서 벗어나야 합니다. 자신에게 좋은 것이 더 넓은 문명에도 좋다고 생각하고, 자신을 위하려는 무의식적인 경향에 기반해 이런 터무니없는 결론들을 합리화하는 것에서 말입니다."

"It's a terribly inaccurate way to think and of course you want to drive that out of yourself because you want to be wise not foolish. You also have to allow for the self-serving bias of everybody else, because most people are not gonna remove it all that successfully, the human condition being what it is. If you don't allow for self-serving bias in your conduct, again you're a fool."
"이는 매우 부정확한 사고방식이며, 당연히 여러분은 현명해지기 위해, 어리석지 않기 위해 그것을 없애고 싶을 것입니다. 또한 다른 모든 사람들의 자기중심적 편향도 고려해야 합니다. 인간의 조건이 그렇듯이, 대부분의 사람들은 그것을 성공적으로 제거하지 못할 것이기 때문입니다. 만약 여러분이 행동할 때 다른 사람들의 자기중심적 편향을 고려하지 않는다면, 다시 말하지만 여러분은 바보입니다."

"I watched the brilliant Harvard Law Review-trained general counsel of Solomon lose his career, and what he did was when the CEO was aware some underling has done something wrong the general counsel said, 'Gee, we don't have any legal duty to report this but I think it's what we should do. It's our moral duty.'"
"저는 하버드 로 리뷰 출신의 뛰어난 솔로몬의 법률 고문이 자신의 경력을 잃는 것을 보았습니다. 그가 한 일은, CEO가 부하 직원이 잘못한 일을 알게 되었을 때, '음, 우리는 이것을 보고할 법적 의무는 없지만, 저는 우리가 해야 한다고 생각합니다. 이것은 우리의 도덕적 의무입니다'라고 말한 것이었습니다."

"Of course the general counsel was totally correct but of course it didn't work – it was a very unpleasant thing for the CEO to do and he put it off and put it off and of course everything eroded into a major scandal and down went the CEO and the general counsel with him."
"물론 법률 고문의 말은 완전히 옳았지만 효과가 없었습니다 - 그것은 CEO가 하기에 매우 불쾌한 일이었고 그는 계속 미루고 미뤘으며, 결국 모든 것이 큰 스캔들로 악화되어 CEO와 법률 고문 모두 몰락했습니다."

"The correct answer in situations like that was given by Ben Franklin. He said, 'If you want to persuade, appeal to interest not to reason.' The self-serving bias is so extreme."
"이런 상황에서의 올바른 해답은 벤자민 프랭클린이 제시했습니다. 그는 '설득하고 싶다면, 이성이 아닌 이해관계에 호소하라'고 했습니다. 자기중심적 편향은 그만큼 극단적입니다."

"If the general counsel had said, 'Look this is going to erupt into something that will destroy you, take away your money, take away your status – it's a perfect disaster,' it would have worked!"
"만약 법률 고문이 '보십시오, 이것은 당신을 파멸시키고, 돈을 잃게 하고, 지위를 잃게 할 큰 재앙으로 터질 것입니다 - 완벽한 재앙이 될 것입니다'라고 말했다면, 효과가 있었을 것입니다!"

마지막으로 멍거는 다음과 같은 결론을 내립니다.
"The last idea that I want to give to you as you go out into a profession that frequently puts a lot of procedure and a lot of precautions and a lot of mumbo jumbo into what it does: this is not the highest form which civilization can reach. The highest form which civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust. Not much procedure just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another."
"여러분이 많은 절차와 예방조치, 그리고 많은 난해한 말들을 사용하는 직업으로 나아갈 때 제가 주고 싶은 마지막 생각은 이것입니다. 그것은 문명이 도달할 수 있는 가장 높은 형태가 아닙니다. 문명이 도달할 수 있는 가장 높은 형태는 마땅한 신뢰의 끊어지지 않는 망입니다. 많은 절차가 아닌, 완전히 신뢰할 수 있는 사람들이 서로를 올바르게 신뢰하는 것입니다."

"In your own life what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust. And if your proposed marriage contract has 47 pages my suggestion is do not enter."
"여러분의 삶에서 원하는 것은 마땅한 신뢰의 끊어지지 않는 망입니다. 만약 여러분의 결혼 계약서가 47페이지라면, 제 제안은 그것에 들어가지 말라는 것입니다."

연설의 마지막 부분
"I hope these ruminations of an old man are useful to you. In the end I'm like old Valiant-for-truth in The Pilgrim's Progress: 'My sword I leave to him who can wear it.'"

"이 늙은이의 이러한 생각들이 여러분에게 유용하기를 바랍니다. 결국 저는 '천로역정'의 늙은 '진리를 위해 용감한 자'와 같습니다. '내 칼은 그것을 쓸 수 있는 자에게 남긴다.'"

 

출처

https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/2007-usc-law-school-commencement-address-by-charlie-munger

"2007 USC Law School Commencement Address"